Mystery in the air about Google's role in 'Jetsons' mobile

Updated 10:39 pm, Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A company right in Google's backyard is working on plans for an aircraft that could one day park itself between two cars at a grocery store.

Some are calling it a flying car - a "Jetsons" mobile.

In late August, a patent was published for a "personal aircraft" assigned to Zee.Aero, a stealth company in Mountain View.

There have been stabs at flying vehicles before, but two designs in the Zee.Aero patent put this one on the cutting edge: It would be battery-powered. And it is designed to lift straight up like a helicopter, so there would be no need for a runway.

Then, as the patent notes, the collection of rotors on top would allow it to hover for a bit before the two rotors in the back would help it cruise off to a grocery store. One of the patent renderings even shows it parked in a lot between two vehicles.

The Chronicle is also hearing from sources that Google is involved, but in what capacity is unclear. Ilan Kroo, a noted professor of aeronautics at Stanford University, has been on partial leave since 2011 to run the company. In an e-mail, he distanced himself from the search giant. "I am working on some interesting transportation ideas at an early stage start-up company in Mt. View (near Google and other tech companies, but not affiliated with them)."

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He holds the aforementioned patent, among others, and has worked for NASA.

The company operates a bare-bones website - just three brief pages with no address, phone number, e-mail or contact form. Its offices are near Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, which is also where you'll find the sprawling Googleplex - and not far from there, Google X, the super-secret facility that gave rise to self-driving cars, Internet balloons and Google Glass.

Sebastian Thrun, who helped start Google X and led the driverless car effort, has said he sees the majority of people using flying cars by 2040 - though those sorts of starry predictions are not unusual.

Zee.Aero's job postings list 11 open positions with notably lavish benefits, all in mechanical and aeronautical engineering. A search of LinkedIn for those listing Zee.Aero as their employer reveals 52 people, only three of whom aren't in technical posts.

Having such a large proportion of engineering and technical staff makes it very difficult to build a stealth hardware company this big without some eye toward sales and marketing - unless you have a generous financial backer that lets you focus on research and not worry about revenue.

Keep in mind that patent drawings rarely look exactly like the final product and Zee.Aero has filed a handful over the past few years. But photos produced after The Chronicle posted information about the company on Wednesday seem to show a craft that matches schematics in the patent submission. The vehicle appears to be slightly wider than a Humvee and low to the ground.

A side question for now is where Zee.Aero might get the sort of battery power such a vehicle would need. Electric-car maker Tesla certainly has made waves recently with its willingness to license its technology.

Either way, another bit of the future is apparently closer to taking flight out of Mountain View.